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Dessert

Washington Pie

A sweet cake with a butter and flour batter, baked in two layers, filled with a lemon‑flavored custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Washington Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix sugar, egg, sweet milk, butter, flour, baking powder, and nutmeg until smooth.

  3. Divide the batter into two layers and bake in the oven until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, stir cornstarch dissolved in a little milk into the boiling milk.

  2. Add the egg yolks and sugar, cooking until thickened.

  3. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold into the hot cream mixture.

  4. Flavor with lemon and spread between the baked layers of cake.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the cake's structure once it sets in the oven.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling and add richness as they cook.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiff peaks, they lighten the filling and add air.
Cornstarch
Thickens the boiling milk into a smooth, sliceable filling.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the cake.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the layers rise.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling until thickened. Cornstarch must be stirred into the boiling milk and cooked until it thickens; undercooked starch stays runny, and egg yolks can curdle if overheated. Folding the whites into a hot mixture deflates them, so keep the custard warm rather than scrambled.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, milk, butter, flour, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, milk, butter, flour, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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